Clostridium acetobutylicum
Species of bacterium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clostridium acetobutylicum, ATCC 824, is a commercially valuable bacterium sometimes called the Weizmann organism, after Jewish Russian-born biochemist Chaim Weizmann. A senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, England, he used them in 1916 as a bio-chemical tool to produce at the same time, jointly, acetone, ethanol, and n-butanol from starch. The method has been described since as the ABE process[1] (acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation process), yielding 3 parts of acetone, 6 of n-butanol, and 1 of ethanol.[1] Acetone was used in the important wartime task of casting cordite.[1] The alcohols were used to produce vehicle fuels and synthetic rubber.
| Clostridium acetobutylicum | |
|---|---|
| |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Bacteria |
| Kingdom: | Bacillati |
| Phylum: | Bacillota |
| Class: | Clostridia |
| Order: | Eubacteriales |
| Family: | Clostridiaceae |
| Genus: | Clostridium |
| Species: | C. acetobutylicum |
| Binomial name | |
| Clostridium acetobutylicum McCoy et al. 1926 (Approved Lists 1980) | |
Unlike yeast, which can digest only some sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, C. acetobutylicum and other Clostridia can digest whey, sugars (pentoses,[1] hexoses[1]) and carbohydrates (oligosaccharides and polysaccharides, but not cellulose[1]), starch and perhaps certain types of lignin, yielding n-butanol, propionic acid, ether, and glycerin.
In genetic engineering
In 2008, a strain of Escherichia coli was genetically engineered to synthesize butanol; the genes were derived from Clostridium acetobutylicum.[2][3] In 2013, the first microbial production of short-chain alkanes was reported[4] - which is a considerable step toward the production of gasoline. One of the crucial enzymes - a fatty acyl-CoA reductase - came from Clostridium acetobutylicum.